Lab requires EVERYONE to keep a science blog

Dave sez, "Open science is one of those cool concepts that asks whether scientific discovery is enhanced if the lines of dialogue (particularly via the web) are more free. Now, you've got great projects like the Public Library of Science, but I recently came across a lab in my neck of the woods that makes it a requirement for lab members to maintain a publicly viewable blog - basically where experiments and data, good and bad, useless and useful are actively discussed. Anyway, I had a chance to chat with Dr. Rosie Redfield (an evolutionary biology at the University of British Columbia who has this blogging lab policy), and it was interesting to note the types of things blogging (in this format) can do for science communication generally." Link (Thanks, Dave!)

[#1 posted by musicman , December 4, 2007 11:00 PM]

Where else would you see

... I CAN'T use the Hin pilABCD operon as a positive-positive control because when I try to transform it into the cya gene of Rd it will just try to recombine with the existing pil operon in there.

in the post before one that says

This is Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age. They came to Vancouver on Saturday and rocked the Bill Copeland Sports Hall down to its shower cubicles.

[#2 posted by Marisa , December 4, 2007 11:30 PM]

I'm all for shaking up the way results are published in scientific research, but there is a reason for journals being peer-reviewed: for every good scientist who is a poor writer, there is a poor scientist who is a good writer. This creates the potential for the non expert to be led convincingly astray.

Sounds like science blogging is a great idea for students though!

[#3 posted by sabik , December 4, 2007 11:45 PM]

@Marisa: while it is the case that poor scientists and outright cranks can mislead the public, scientists' blogs are likely to be the least of the problem. If anything, they're likely to be a positive.

As for this being great for students, well, in the fields of science, we are all students.

[#4 posted by Mr. Gunn , December 5, 2007 4:21 PM]

This is cool. If you look at her comments, you can see that there's definitely interaction going on there.

[#5 posted by Attila Csordas , December 6, 2007 9:52 AM]

The Redfiled Lab is the best lab site out there:
it is the most web friendly and give us clues on how the lab sites of the future should look like. Funds, grants are public and listed. Unfortunately it is not amongst the top ten at The Laboratory Website Awards I don't really understand why: http://www.the-scientist.com/finalist/index/